The former Bachelor star, 29, can finally give undivided attention to his fiancée, Catherine Giudici, who supported him all season as he competed for the mirrorball trophy with Peta Murgatroyd.

"I've gone from one show to the next for the past 12 or 14 months," Lowe told PEOPLE backstage after being sent home. "It's nice now. I'll have a little bit of a break and I can take a deep breath. [Catherine and I will] definitely take a vacation and relax. I'm definitely going to spend a lot of quality time with her because dancing consumed my life for the past few months, so it'll be nice to play with my dogs – the simple things."

Although Lowe told reporters that performing such poor routines on Monday will "always eat away at me," he does say, "Overall I'm proud of myself, and [Peta] put in so much hard work and effort into making me somewhat of a good dancer. I'm walking away happy. We had such an incredible friendship and I'm just going to miss spending time with her every day – not that I won't see her in the future."

Echoes Murgatroyd: "We had so much fun during this competition. We had a great friendship and we can look back on these memories forever."

"I love everyone," he said. "That's one of the cool things about doing the show. I didn't know I'd make such good friends with all the cast members. I think it's safe to say Ingo [Rademacher]'s the long shot, so I'd like to see Ingo go as far as he can. It'll be interesting to see how he does next week."